The Workers

The workers are gathering
In pubs behind shop fronts
Checked carpet and wood
Period lights getting brighter

The great minds of a generation
Clearing empty glasses from tables
Refining critiques of each other
Point making, missing the floor

In the corner, squinting clarity
Dilation beyond the intentional half
And the world offering itself up
Clear and manageable as not before

By the window, lives they could have lived
With more spirit and belief
And beauty their eyes tell them about
Before they disown their own feelings

Sleep gratified, they wake disgusted
Shouting inward to empty space
Frowning at those who hide
In youth or possibility

The full consideration

Of morning burning heads
No point, in change they see
Paying money to feel free

Pavement Walls

The place you know from crime statistics
That you never come to see
I’ve never met you here
You never fill my empty concrete afternoons

I’d take your shock or your fear

I’d take your knowing, I’m better, look
If you’d take me out
Break me out from pavement walls

Some Regret

Time is moving, still
Around comfort and corners
The bloom of well kept flowers
Will come again, be patient
Buds in beds, moving soil
Close enough to buildings
Missing the sky

Through the brick, lives
Bare homes and neat toys
Stacked, waiting for play
A mother clutching book bags
Lunchboxes and small hands
Trying to slip away, a father
Left before the light

Weekend, duty arrives
The pleasantness of parks
Branded buggies and empty art
He cannot buy the sun but tries
A wave without a smile
Jealous blotches, a loving hate
A regretful son before his rise

Best Day

The day before May
Flowers are promised
Family ties tied
And the scream of youth

All that was never
Done the night before
A table joke, fizzy wine
And finger food

A bad disco and
The happiest couple
Dancing in cheap light
Tight white and Monday's suit

Misery with sparkling
Confetti hearts
A table from happy
Six seats from doubt

A click and tired smiles
Crying memories of when
An acknowledgement of who
I do

Sea Change

Waiting for the sea
To change itself
To sort the grains
To leave them bare
For another day
of feathered birds
and bare chests

Greeting

The evening station
A shining floor
Lights are branded
Christmas sparkle

A smart drunk
Stumbles through rush
Hour workers
Stepping sideways, home

Hidden misery
In their way
Forced wool, decoration
A glam tree

You leave late
Trains, part gloom
And gatherings
with gifts

Reunion, parts of
a greeting, then gone,
Your mind moving
Through the night

Whitby Man

The year has gone
Cold fronts and outsiders
Blown back with time
In the front bar
A man who went to sea
With dark mild and distain

Outside, an empty fullness
Buoys and breakwater
Ladders of wood below wood
Crab pots and cold, flashing light
Piled stones before sea
And a tide he watches in or out

Inside a view of abbey walls
No one has come to look
But he listens still
All beard and blood vessels
For the echoed, distant laughter
Of those who never see the sea

I Wait Here

I wait here, a place where hoods are up
On children, on ledges of former buildings
Where shouting starts and no one calls them down
Where food is delivered by unstable scooters
and they buy gold and sell beauty
From an upstairs salon of brutal concrete

The wet has filled last winter's potholes
Taking the dry of shirtless Sundays,
The dominant light of a meat emporium
What's bought is not owned, generations
Of choices, frozen food, turkey crowns on shelves
Donations paid for by the Kilogram sack

The dark of the sky is here, a dead cat
Doesn't feel the cold, of courting teenagers,
Swearing to each other, disappearing
Down the dirt filled ginnells of night
To enclosed brick capsules of life, shelters
From the distant presence of the unknown

Wyther Bench

On the long green before the mud
Where the path cracks and wears to nothing
Is a bench burnt in the middle
Frowning upon its neighbours
Who leave it amongst rubbish
Its names charred to black
"They never loved this place"

The Place from the Train

Somebody lives there, in the place you've never heard of.
With bridges across roads and train lines never meant to be.
The backs of pubs with half names hanging from walls,
unused fields, too expensive to farm, too cheap to sell
and warehouse buildings with nothing to house, nothing in store.
The tight terraces and empty shops, the parks with no horizon,

Somebody lives there with dreams that rise and join.
That together say something, to those who listen,
That those who have lost life or live beyond
Their better judgement with imigination still
Have dreams within which to live
In the place from the train

Failing Forwards

When eggs were in baskets
Too pissed to stand
I saw it in him.
Emotion, withheld.

Failing forwards,
Being a man.
Picking features
From the floor.

I saw his smile
The pleasure in it.
I saw the human
Behind the wall

The Walk to School

The Children are back
Walking to school
They see the rain
Dark, distant cloud

The hand held and
The hurried up
The wonderers,
Who don't get there

The rain soaked and
The wearers of coats
Walk the same path
To be lined up

The timid and
The bullying
Each shouted name
Become the same

Belle Isle

Darker clouds took the last rays of sun from Belle Isle
As we walked the long road to a city that ignores us
Past the brick and concrete constructions of our youth
House by house, to the car covered barrier in our minds

We swam all night in a human sea, drawn like flies,
to half drown in bright light, sirens and screams
surfacing on Sunday with no money to return
A spiralling southern staircase, our own hands and feet

Bread Cake Bramley

Bread cake Bramley
With a potato wedge smile
Half moon, loose and seasoned skin
White, stubby, beer bottle arms
With a black label tattoo
Butt end fingers,
ringed with nicotine
Pin hole, salt shaker eyes
Staring

A View from Armley Prison

There is a view from Armley prison
A heartland on which to reflect
A view of clear skies and towers
In spring, happy visiting faces,
every morning's missed
A view of grey, pissing rain
Autumn cloud and concealment
A cold distant Christmas
Tired, empty darkness
Bright morning

Our Time

This is our time in Belle Isle
Margarie and I, dawn quiet,
the clear up and shut up of youth

On Heights estate, the gunnels of
discarded bottles are open
In Middleton and on Cavalier Hill

We're like birds who've waited for the roost
nights of noise have given over
to the morning power brokers

We tap our sticks on no go areas
the enemy asleep 'til lunchtime
this is our time

Happy

A dog called happy
Hippies my uncle calls them
Then he won't turn up for tea

Separate Rooms

You see me, almost. sometimes
In a dream with you, Leaving school
In nineteen fifty two, dancing
knowing what to be

We don't speak. Like we used to
"seeing the family soon" A mention for the weather
This June, which has been the same
For over a week

It used to be in that look or smile
Not for a while. The jokes
haven't lasted, we only share
our distain

Who is to blame,
These useless connections, lack of respect
Didn't check, memories, swallowed,
Down the rat poison way

Today, we pay for our 'lack of doing' crime
waiting for our time, in separate rooms

United by Screens

In a suburb of boredom I am connected with you
Carricatured, youthful with little we can do
Denied our agency and with lives others don't see
We find each other online, were we exist, you and me
We are are vilified, patronised, compared to their youth
They restrict our access, take our time. They invent the truth
We should have a "real conversation" they say
But we are real and we are talking, our way
We know what we want and we find it online
Electronically connected almost all of the time
Until we can choose our lives, we'll seek to be free
A truer connection and the acceptance of what we see
That we're actually human, able to think and in our teens
We're sharing, we're sociable, we are united by screens

Futures Fall

Sinking words set out to cut
We're in this together but
Tight belts leak loose change
While others lose what their generation will not regain

Schools are forgotten with past promises of repair
With extra money for those with golden stairs
The same doors feel opportunties knock
Rations are offered to every high rise block

Hard decisions, the acceptance of job loss
A wave of worthlessness, new faces lined with a cross
The day darkens on a burden shared by all
Pennies drop and futures fall